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Your Offboarding Guide: How To Handle An Employee’s Data After They Leave

Your Offboarding Guide: How To Handle An Employee’s Data After They Leave

When someone leaves your company, whether planned or sudden, their digital footprint remains. To protect your business and maintain continuity, it's important to handle their inbox, files, and data properly.

Grand Consulting
April 23, 2025

QUICK SUMMARY

Secure accounts right away. When an employee leaves, promptly disable account access and recover devices, but avoid immediately deleting emails or files—they may contain valuable or legally required information.
Handle inboxes and files thoughtfully. Set up email forwarding, delegation, or auto-replies, and reassign ownership of important files to maintain business continuity and avoid disruptions.
Delay deletion and review unused accounts regularly. You may want to wait 30 to 90 days before deleting data to account for legal or compliance needs. Take the time to audit unused accounts and licenses to reduce costs and optimize resources.

When someone leaves your company, whether planned or sudden, their digital footprint remains. On surface, the offboarding process seems pretty straightforward: disable their account, recover their devices, and move on.

But from an IT perspective, it’s not quite so simple. Their inbox, files, and data all need to be handled properly to protect your business and maintain continuity.

After someone leaves, here are several key things to consider:

Secure Their Accounts

The first priority should always be securing their accounts. Disable access to email, accounts, and any business-critical systems.

If the employee had access to company devices, those should be remotely locked or wiped if not already returned. Acting quickly helps prevent unauthorized access and protects sensitive company data.

Email

Instead of immediately deleting their email account, take a step back and evaluate what you should do next. Do you still need to receive the email being delivered to their account? Does their email history contain important information you may need later?

There are several methods for handling inboxes and incoming email:

Set up an auto-replay to redirect contacts to the right person going forward.
Forward their email to another colleague or distribution list.
Delegate their inbox so someone else can manage and respond on their behalf.
Set up a shared inbox so others can monitor and respond to messages.

Data and Files

The next step is to determine what to do with their documents and files. This includes internal shared folders, documents in cloud storage, and any relevant files on local devices. Identify what’s important, reassign ownership within cloud platforms, and make sure team members have access to everything they need to keep projects moving. Don’t forget to update shared permissions and folder ownerships so nothing becomes inaccessible.

You may want to hold off on deleting anything too soon

It’s tempting to clean things up right away, but sometimes it pays to wait. You may need access to emails or files for legal, compliance, or business reasons. Depending on your industry and company policy, it’s often smart to retain data for at least 30 to 90 days post-departure. This buffer allows time to respond to any unexpected needs, whether it's a client question, an audit, or a legal issue. Deleting data too soon can create unnecessary complications.

Offboarding timelines can also vary depending on the employee’s role, the amount of data to be transferred or archived, and how much handover has already taken place. If an employee trains their replacement before leaving, offboarding might be quick and easy. On the other hand, if an employee leaves suddenly, it could take a while to backfill the position and the process can get drawn out.

Regularly Revisit Unused Accounts and Licenses

Once you’ve archived the data and reassigned what’s necessary, take the time to review all associated accounts. Unused software licenses, cloud storage, and paid services tied to former employees can add up quickly. By regularly auditing your user accounts and digital tools, you can cut unnecessary costs and streamline your tech stack.

Don’t forget to let your IT team know when you're ready to fully delete an old account! At Grand Consulting, we help a lot of businesses with offboarding. We can certainly delete someone’s account, but only you can decide what to do with their email access, software licenses, files, and other data.